Mr. A. Jehangir

Excellent and welcome introduction to a major Muslim figure, April 23 2004

It is the best available study to date in the English language on thelife and times of this great Sunni scholar, mujaddid, Sufi and saint.
The book is extremely-well researched and although in a very few
places which deal with theological nuances she falls into the trap of
the Orientalist--after all she is a non-Muslim writing about Islam--of
misunderstanding the Urdu poetry--overall the book is fair and
extremely well balanced.
The book begins with a look at the ancestors of Ala Hazrat and how
they came to settle in Bareilly and their family history. It also
develops the political history of the situation in British India at
the time and the… Read more

A rare gem, this is cinema as Art, April 20 2004

Thomas Mann's novella "Death in Venice" is rightly considered one of the greatest books of European literature and this screen adaptation by the Italian maestro is brilliant and also completely faithful to the book unlike most movies based on literature. Every scene in the novella is to be found in the movie and it is a film of stunning visual beauty; this is entirely deliberate as the short story itself is a jewel which deals with the twin subjects of Art and Beauty and the Artist's relationship between the two. The plot follows a famous German composer (this is the only departure from the book--in the novella he was a German writer but Mann's character was based on Mahler… Read more

Necessary expose of Wahhabism--the ideology of terrorism., April 28 2003

This book is a timely effort. Traditional Muslim scholars fought against this heresy disguising itself in the garb of Islam from the time of its inception by the infamous Ibn Abd al Wahhab al-Najdi who is detailed in this book. Indeed, his own brother, Shaykh Sulayman ibn Abdul Wahhab refuted him as did the great Muslim scholars all over the world; and they are still doing.

This movement is extremely crude and cultish and rejects almost all of the traditional teachings of Islam which do not fit into its narrow black and white views: any Muslim who disagrees with them is considered a non-believer! They are only about 2% of the world's Muslims but because of Saudi petro-dollars their… Read more